Everything about The Sjambok totally explained
The
sjambok or
litupa is the traditional heavy leather
whip of
South Africa, sometimes seen as synonymous with
apartheid but actually much older and still used outside the official judiciary.
It is traditionally made from an adult
hippopotamus (or
rhinoceros) hide, or possibly from the
penis of either species, but is also commonly made out of plastic.
A strip of the animal's hide is cut and carved into a strip 3 to 5
feet (0.9 to 1.5
m) long, tapering from about 1
inch (25
mm) thick at the handle to about 3/8” (9 mm) at the tip.
This strip is then rolled (possibly between heavy metal plates) until reaching a near circular form. The resulting whip is as flexible as
whalebone, and very tough. A plastic version was made for the
South African Police Service, and used for
riot control.
The sjambok had a variety of uses, with the most obvious being cattle driving. While it may have been synonymous with slave discipline, it was heavily used by the Voortrekkers driving their oxen while migrating from the Cape of Good Hope. Even today, the sjambok is used by herdsmen to drive cattle. They are actually illegal to use in South Africa due to their historic connotations. The sjambok is also used today in South Africa by those who mete out discipline imposed by
kangaroo courts.
Other types
The name seems to have originated as
cambuk in
Indonesia, where it was the name of a wooden rod for punishing
slaves. When
Malayan slaves were imported to South Africa, the instrument and its name were imported with them, the material was changed to hide, and the name was finally incorporated into the
Afrikaans, spelled as
sjambok.
The instrument is also known as
imvubu (hippopotamus in
Zulu),
kiboko (hippopotamus in
Swahili) and as
mnigolo in
Malinké. In the
Portuguese African
colonies and
Congo Free State it was called a
chicotte, from the
Portuguese word for whip. There it was sometimes rendered even more lacerating by adding nails.
In the
Belgian Congo, the instrument was also known as
fimbo and was used to force labor from local people through flogging, sometimes to death. The official tariff for punishment in this case was lowered in time from twenty strokes to eight, then (in 1949) six, and progressively four and two, until flogging was outlawed completely in 1955. In North Africa, particularly
Egypt, the whip was called a
kurbash, after the Arabic for whip.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Sjambok'.
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